Business Passion occupies the core of any great business presentation.

Business Passion is like fuel for your car.  Not just any fuel.

High Octane fuel.

Passion captures much of what makes for an especially powerful business presentation.

Business is Passionate, so Capture it

In earlier times, they used the word “Earnestness” to capture the same powerful concept as passion.

Edwin Dubois Shurter was a presenting master in the early 20th Century, and he said way back in 1903 that “Earnestness is the soul of oratory.  It manifests itself in speech by animation, wide-awakeness, strength, force, power, as opposed to listlessness, timidity, half-heartedness, uncertainty, feebleness.”

What was true then is surely true today.  Michelle Bowden is a presentation guru who embraces presentation earnestness.

And yet, “earnestness” – or business passion – is frowned upon, perhaps, as somehow “uncool.”

If you appear too interested in your business presentation, that puts you at risk . . . you think.  If you “fail” then you face utter humiliation.  Or so you believe.

Better to pretend you don’t care, eh?

Showing Too Much Interest?

So the default student attitude is to affect an air of cool, so that no defeat is too damaging.  Sleepwalk your way through your presentation.

No business passion for you!

And you save your best – your earnestness – for something else.

For your friends, for your sports contests, for your facebook status updates, for your pizza discussions, for your intramural softball team . . .

But this also means that all of your presentation victories, should ever you score one or two, are necessarily small.  Meager effort yields acceptable results in areas where only meager effort is required.

Is mediocrity acceptable to you?  Do you settle?  Do you want to simply muddle through your presentations, part of an ocean of undistinguished colleagues who also seem not to care?

Leave Mediocrity to Others and Embrace Business Passion

Mediocrity is the province of the lazy and nonchalant.  Shurter was a keen observer of presentations, and he recognized the key role played by business passion in a successful presentation: “When communicated to the audience, earnestness is, after all is said and done, the touchstone of success in public speaking, as it is in other things in life.”

Wrap your material in you.  And recognize that we in business are blessed with the stuff of great stories, epic stories of conflict.  Of victory and defeat.  Of triumph and tragedy.  Of power and business passion.

Seize that power to influence.

This means giving a business presentation that no one else can give.  A presentation that no one else can copy.  Why?  Because it arises from your essence, from your own core.

It means demonstrating genuine enthusiasm for your subject.  It means recognizing that the subject of your presentation could be the love of someone else’s life.  It could be their business or their product.  Or their service.  You should make it yours and put business passion into your presentation.

In the process, you craft your persona, your powerful personal brand that differentiates you from the great hoi-polloi of undistinguished speakers.  And you achieve remarkable personal competitive advantage.

Embrace your topic with earnestness, and you will shine as you deliver an especially powerful business presentation.

For more on the power of business passion, consult The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.